Those of you who have been connected to our ministry of training Christians to use media effectively know that we have been conducting Smartphone Filmmaking workshops in Asia and Africa (140 students in four countries since 2016). What is amazing is that with training and mentoring each trainee can produce stories of God at work in their own lives using that smartphone in their hand!
There are 3.2 billion individuals who have smartphones now and by 2025 that is projected to be 5.9 billion or 71% of the population. On Facebook alone, the average person has 338 friends! On Instagram 150 friends. By 2025 there are projected to be 2.7 billion Christians and if each had 300 friends on social media – well you can do the math! Even restricted access countries like Burma has 61 million mobile users.
What if the Christians (each of us) “…were equipped to be able to reflect what they hear from the pulpit (Bible study, etc) to their own networks in real time, letting the little networks of people they know hear about, listen to, engage with the reflections (of God) that they are having.” (Dave Adams ICMC Chairman). Adams continues, “that, I think, is a future call for media training. How do we as media trainers train every person to use the media? That is a huge challenge!”
So we (Christine and I) find ourselves praying about the next steps in equipping the average believer in Africa and Asia to tell those stories of God at work to those within their networks (and beyond). Our goal is to also train trainers who live in Africa and Asia and will continue to equip citizen storytellers.
2019 Workshop Roundup
From June 18, 2019 until July 30th Chris and I were conducting workshops in India and Thailand. In each 5 day period we taught writing, filming, photography, audio and editing on the students smartphone. Each of them completed several short videos and participated in a group project.
Mumbai, India – June 24-28th. 23 students came together from several cities of India for our first workshop of the summer. It was hosted by David and Liz Peters of Galilean International. Liz is the daughter of Dr C.D. (Jeba) Jebasingh who founded Galilean in 1979. Jeba was instrumental in getting Chris and I to India in 1974 to conduct a month long Audio Visual Workshop in Bangalore.
Varanasi, India – July 1-9th. We held a workshop for 21 students from all over India in the city most known for being the most Hindu city of India. It was coordinated by a smartphone student in Thailand who was kicked out of India after 12 years of ministry.
Khon Kaen, Thailand – July 22-26th. Partnering with Youth With a Mission(YWAM) we taught 24 mostly Thai students over a 5 day period. The coordinator was in our Chiang Mai Workshop.
International Communication Training Institute Vision 2020
Dan was invited to attend this conference to Alexandra, Egypt Sept 24-Oct 4th. The goal was to discuss the future on Christian Media training primarily in the Global South. Trainers from Asia, Africa, Europe and the USA attended this meeting and made recommendations on the future that the ICTI governing board will consider.
